I can imagine river living, living by the river,
the Willamette where it winds through Creswell,
life between the buttes when there was so much
more to uncertainty than there is now.
Calling calling Colorado Gail, calling on my
dead ones, death, calling on the red ones,
milk red spots or stains, the blueberry of
buildings, the gray of grass, it dominates.
There is no discourse without reservation. The reservation
of Wade Campbell, fired from Colorado U. The Colorado calling.
White of river, rice, stiletto thinking,
harm and whiteness,
charm and lightness,
tornado in the tomato,
excellence.
Excellent observations.
Chasmatic divides of Colorado,
I am not sure of anything shaking,
sure shaking sugar.
I am aligned, aligned with green.
Light green of lakes, lake green.
Sonor of sounds, radar, sonar,
beeping in my blood.
Joy of Stopping.
Cold Rain, Joy of Stopping in the Cold Rain.
Stopping by Starbucks on a Rainy Summer Afternoon.
Air conditioned like a bunch of plague victims.
Hurts, Incest. Insects. Sex.
Who works hard and
who does not. Morning
example. Morning works
hard hard work raising
the hemisphere.
Shadow crawl.
Sam said Landfish. Mary Ann spelunking.
This is more than less.
This is a venti no water Americano.
This is a lemonade.
This is without respect.
This is a poetry of abuse.
The abuse poem. The nirvana poem. The well poem, the ill poem.
This is a leap out of poetry the false well.
This is a heartstring.
This is a spoonrocket (K. Prevallet)
This is a landfish (Sam).
This is incapacity.
This is the rest of the beggars.
This is the consistent.
This is the technical.
This is your sip, these are your glasses,
this is your mirror, this is your window.
This is your sudden face,
this is rabid dog fear in the night,
this is jumping flea ukulele.
This is Mr. Killbug, this is a Burgher. This is a Beggar.
This is air, this is male pattern baldness,
this is a reduction, this is avoiding getting organized.
This is not a gnat, this is not a note.
This is the scent of your sweat and a sharp pain behind the eyes,
this is code, this is a tangerine, this is over but not over,
this is ooh and aah
this is lipsynch, this is lip stuck
this is father daughter day
and after all that okay
Murderous exhaustion exhaustion of hill climbing exhaust air exhaust
the constant muddy beating and calling
The Exhaustion
Calendar check 6:30.
Time check 1:30.
Skin check: itchy.
Wrist check: stiff.
Mind check: jittery.
Stomach check: jittery.
Throat check: thirsty.
Mouth check: worried about someone else’s leukemia.
Soul check: distant.
Pulse check: alive.
Poetry check: parallel universe.
Sky check: blue delightful.
Bird check: twittering and cheeping.
Smell check: corpse flowers.
Sound check: birds, flies buzzing, metallic clink, a flagpole, distant pounding, distant humming.
Air check: slightly breezy, warm.
Clink, clink clink.
Cars passing. Thump.
Cedrus Libani, Cedar of Lebanon.
Stone cairns.
Cedar needles.
Adirondack chairs.
Conversations hanging in the air.
Buzzing plane. Gardens.
Labor hanging in the air, remnants of sweat.
Dry tongue. Clink, clink.
Air belly, squirrel throat.
Darkness behind the eyes.
Mouth film.
Uneasy belly. Toast and jelly.
Uneasy eyes, ants and flies.
Uneasy legs, beans and eggs.
Uneasy hands, toast and jam.
Ordered poetry for the millennium. I am not a MicMac, not a Passamaquoddy, not a Pequot. Hanging conversations. I have made up my mind. Corpse flower, cedar needles. Aboriginal gardens. Poisons. Fatalities. Eco echoes.
Afternoon check: summer.
Somewhere there is quiet there is desert, there are trails. Somewhere there is dust warming in the early sunlight. Somewhere hares are twitching, coyotes scratching, sage brush glowing scented in the air. Somewhere.
Not a lot beyond the asphalt. Sense of heat. Some heat arising. Hot sun on my foot. Grimy hands, oil of muffin on my fingers. Ashes floating in the air. Smell—coffee roasted black. Harm. Gas moving through my pelvis. Hair strands bothering my face. Dry with work. Wet with love. Sparrow visits.
Hesitance – so typical.
“Coming Soon – Tony’s Deli”…
“Office Space for Rent”
“Sanda’s Cleaners – Free Pickup”
(scared) (scarce) (spotlight) (frozen in)
like the turtle laying her eggs on the beach
trance tears running
trance tears trance tears
your 10-year-old body cannot take it
I’m going home soom. I’m used to haze and clouds, I find them comforting.
Moment in a corner—NYC 3rd Ave 48th & 49th or is it 47th & 48th? So much music, so much silence on the streets. So many walking, so much purpose.
There is a row of pines. There are balls of flowers hanging in the air, purple petunias, yellow, gold and red.
Crow eating garbage next store to next door to my parking spot. Next door.
Jangling, fried and frazzled dura. Belted in. Car speak.
failure to sprout and
fail to thrive the spinach seeds
but beets and carrots are up in their rows
and
Max the black cat wanders in the yard
a wander purposeful
a wander graceful
and impressive
what of it
this is after all
this is whatsoever
this is misbegotten
not story story story story
what about the world
this planet doesn’t want us after all
Resting consciousness and sparrow comes to visit. Sparrows are efficient. No timetables, no project plans.
Soil resting in the sun, plants are busy. Plants don’t need a path and nor do animals.
There is a picnic table, it is wood, and an umbrella. It goes through a hole. And it is hot, organic, and resting in the sun.
Abridged luxury. And I am NOT online.
I am sad. Little girl with pastry, mother talking on the cellphone. Unsweetened. Men doing crosswords with raised eyebrows.
Markers. Stream of bubbles where it all went down.
It is nice to jettison almost all these things. Full garbage cans and full recycling. Being present, remembering myself and my stomach full of gel and wanting to be somewhere else not here not in the parking lot.
Covered with azalea, peach, yellow, orange. And pink, red, purple. It is the time of year.
Tuning up, a discovery, a path of order. Birdsong, cars starting to move. Exercises. I am in. I am out. No I.
Hot page cool breeze. Birds and juice. Death in the air, creeping. Suicidal Ideation. Nothing but pleasantries, a need to scan the lines. Rustle woods, the deer step, squirrel shuffle. Peculiar disconnectedness of individuals, editors, the edited smile, the censored speech. Pileup of phrases. The litter of prepositions, the punctuation of punctuation. Texture of voices and air conditioning noises. The bands and patterns of tension. Often I ask: what are you talking about? What does it mean, the transfer function?
black flies in the golding light
the piercing chirp the here-I-am of jays
the coo-coo mourning the obstreperous chirp of sparrow
and no crow no crow not now and
with the comprehensive smell of garbage early train
This is my life what has it come to what I am learning is something different I must say it is draining it is lanced I am lanced and oozing after Canyonlands and Arches Park. I am teetering on the edge and struggle to make something when there’s the skyline halfway clothed with leaves and a suburban brightness in the air with sounds of water gurgling and a morning goldness in the air and a suburban cheeping with a hum of traffic while the dog rests and the flying bee whirrs by.
The smell of garbage mixes with a hint of lilac this is it I will not write
Grass on my sleeve
Gaze the hard g followed by the hissing z
Or gauze or geshe or
the thrashing doves The sign of
Bhikkhu emptiness here in
suburbs son sprawled out
in light at 5 am this is
a ticklish dream wrapped cold
around my torso cold and
drowned around my torso
dog tickling and jiggling
jingling here him sniffing smithing
Three pots of herbs well one and two of emptiness
Small and without punctuation although
the sky is pleasant forming I am not alone
Having tea and toast face raw with bugs
alarmed
Need well something. I am in need this morning. Some new habit some new privilege to be awake and early writing with backdrop of garbage and the smell of birds
The I is overwhelming here and now in land of birdsong 6 am the cheep the chirp the dark quilt on the wall alonso allons sie alliteration awfulness I am expected.
Try to be direct, try to direct, the team, the leadership. The common, the committee, the approach, the aftermath. Amazed. I am amazed in grass in weeds in yard work. The root, the colors, the shapes, the tiny “M”, the way things are happening. A tiny phone in a tiny hole. Rhythmic remarks. The tiny mags, the page turners.
We’re not sure we’re wanted on this planet.
Busy women clopping by in heels.
Children wearing gray and brown. Wishing for grey gardens.
I think you are crazy if you are seeing interesting, exciting things are happening any crazy where. The dogs of war.
The drains. The applicable.
This is not ecological.
Andalusia. Spells. Smells. Coffee bean.
Ecology. Well, our remove from it.
I know my row of herbs in the upper yard—rosemary, sage, lady’s mantle, bergamot. Some lavender. Oh well, okay, bored.
the desire for—the freedom from delusion. Investigating the nature of delusion from my chair—this is a joy—this is a path—this is a step—this is a way—this is my ignorance—this is the light—this is my death—this is my bag of skin—this is my suffering—this is you—you are impermanent—your attributes give rise to my reactions—there is flux—curtains of loose petals streaming past the window—sun—it’s warm—the lawn—it’s green—it’s trimmed—my neck it aches, how much money in the US goes to lawn care—how many ticks are out there, how many coins, how many undiscovered facts and how much data, how many cells, how many newborn leaves, how many petals and how many sprouts, how many hours digging and how many butterflies are born, how often have you watched a turtle in the last few days—and do you barbecue upon a tiny grill—what are the unique facts of your life if any and how can they endear you to me—how does one “pray” for others—what is the difference between compassionate and sunlight—how can we be brighter and more tender—how can we be burnished and more brave—cherished and with capacity to cherish—all our cherished landscapes in a row—and then—we’re breathing into emptiness—and then—another sprout
tenderness, an inchworm, a pea sprout, a thin stalk of asparagus, the tender impulse of creation, tenderness in documents at work, tender care with headers, footers, table of contents, extending tenderness, your ravaged leaves, your petals bruised and brown, still vines of tenderness, your tendrils, tendrils reaching out, there is a sun of brightness hiding in the data, there is a shadow of creation in the project, the sun is out, the bright light of discovery, the light is beaming from my eyes, my hands, my ears receive this light, I love the light, I am an instrument of the light, an Apollonian, with my seeking tendrils climbing high
just an image
Trepidation starting to write—iron chains, bit in my mouth, torture devices all around my head—
wind blows fluff past these windows
struggle
it seems ceaseless
Relaxation in the spring sun.
Leaves in chartreuse fluff state—sigh—poetry is so predictable and oppressive oppressive rules—sigh—
tools, tools, more tools and cobblestones and asphalt patch and soil
pea sprouts
asparagus shoots
let me show you
Misconceptions. A tension from upper back through neck and into head.
A sick daring causing stomachache
a slight—what sort of slight
naming what is “hard” obscuring what is “soft” or “easy”
Some problem with the order—where are the 30—were there 30 or not?
honking, rapid, repetitive
see ya later and I got the door
salad for here
sometimes best to disappear
Stone woman, take it back. TAKE IT BACK! Zip—and nothingness; or emptiness and that is that. Alternatively peace.
and animals at all four corners and canopies of birds. Need Need Need Need Crochet a cap of need, I’ll make it up to you.
The words the words the words the magazines. Shopping at Goodwill immersed in a fabric well waiting for the dingdong bell that makes me finished and the mothers buying clothing for their kids. A load of sweetness.
Longing for the quiet of the bustling morning shops. In the small town, does anyone arise before 6? In the village, do you encounter people on the street? In the English village, naked people with monstrous faces? In the white north, chanting lunatics? In the humid south, alligators are successful, polar bears are not. Difficulties among the animal populations.
Roof. The neighbor’s roof. The sad roof up the hill, its wonderful colors, its sagging on its frame, its mosses. Its sheltering aspect. The roof hanging from trees. The defenseless roof. The roof of disability, frightening in its height. Standing on the roof, under the roof. Falling through your vocabulary. Roof owns its pattern and its colors, we own its repair and its protection.
Nothing simple here. No lily.
The frog lily, the toad flax.
Animals have not been aroused.
I can’t write untruths.
And speech becoming cleansed to silence.
Dishes—plates. Cups, forks, spoons. Bowls.
Shocking in the office. Four seasons.
And then the showers. Raindrops are individuals tonight. Raindrops, say hello. I can’t make this up.
The pale yellow amaryllis photo.
The thin maroon line around the outside of each petal. The curved forms. Not done. Crisp. Pale. Curved.
The body.
Isolated.
When I read the teachings, I want to write like a teacher.
There is no teacher. Water lily.
There is no teacher. Amaryllis.
Animals. Rabbits. Wild turkeys dead at roadside. Flooding. Mouse in the kitchen, a dark brown mouse. Max was outside on the porch. Bill at home under the table.
The coldness of this spring to go out with the trash and breathe a moment in the cold air. To know yourself. I can’t really tell what’s going on. I feel an awful lot like a narrator. I have no story, just to let go of that tail.
The long tail, prehensile.
Happy tail, silly tail. Tail of my dreams.
And also—toil. And toile.
Old fashioned fabrics, what has happened to you? In Girl Scouts, I made a book of fabric swatches trying to learn their names like “Dotted Swiss.”
I am unwilling at this point.
Unwilling on campus. Irrational fears. There is no healing balm for everything. So just get used to it. The most unpleasant thing of all is—heart dropping from fear. If I could avoid that automatic heart-drop from now on, I would. Do egrets have it? Flamingos, herons, other long birds? Birds with hearts that beat so fast and so unknown. Birds with eyelashes and bird dogs, slim.
Braver tonight about the cold in my arms. The scratching sound the pen makes. Smoothness here, no buttons. Smoothness, softness and smoothness.
Some sound of rain remains. Tremendous rain, hard going. No crickets yet. Peepers faint. Sky sound with plane. Birds are more fascinating than dogs.
Are sounds more interesting than devastations? Where does feeling lie, where’s the trapdoor? Wily, wily, wily, Mr. Coyote, let me in. Mr. Desert, let me bring my withered limbs. Just bleach my bones after you nibble on my skin. Irradiated or non-irradiated, genetically engineered in a most horrendous tribal fashion, I am here now, yet a remnant, a recessive gene, a regression sans vitality, a lack of luck, a loss. And here I am considering the withering of my death. Listening to this particular rain in its accumulation, the sump pump hums and gurgles, the train whistles, New York-bound.
No one’s here. Loud sound far away, a fog horn, some emergency of rain. Sam went out on a call about a flooded basement. Last night we ate at Pepe’s, the original tomato pie, no cheese. And hear the cheeping, the continuous chirping of suburban birds, and what is their mental capacity, and how do they stay warm? I want the angel of bird feathers and down to clothe me. I want the tendency to sing and fly. Their lives pass cheaply, no funerals at their deaths. No funerals, no funerals.
Just to catalogue your options: details, details, sensory details, grace, the yen for grace, the absence, flaws or beauty or perfection, memories or dreams. Objects or abstractions. Happiest with objects, but they’re few and far between. And most are shabby. Mug of oolong tea—swampy, with no sweetener. The little aloe, fading in its shallow pot. The sensation of flaring from beside my eyes, a tiredness. There’s a mouse living in the kitchen.
And speaking from a higher place, the upper yard needs mowing, shaggy grass. And speaking from a higher place, the ridgelines in my neighborhood are now obscured by mist, there are no mountains, just the thinnest veil of red.
I like the redness of the buds, I like to climb. I hear a new accumulation of rain, some vigorous hissing in the street. The phone rings. The cell phone rings. I turned off the TV. And now the last bit left, the buzzing, stops.
A day of steel-blue rain. A day of falling steel in pellets, grinding up your street, your car, your sight. Falling off the doors and windows, falling under gutters and sewers, falling through your clothes and eyeglasses. Broken umbrellas hum with guilt. Aversion drives us down the street to Kinko’s where I run copies of my tax forms. Out in the steel light of spring. Out to the mailbox, out the splashy windows, down the street. Pain scrawling in my head and neck and shoulders, an accompaniment of cello.
See the margin where the lawngrass turns to weeds.
Deer in the weeds, robin on the lawn. Jill Chan. The extravagance of the mentally ill. An email—write to Ann. Some stillness in my face, my weary eyes. Persistent nagging from my taxes. Still, a stomachache. Desire for tea and toast. Bird shadow. Ear flick. Plastic bag.
There’s no commotion. I have a half-page left. I take whatever happens, but do I even have to say that? Stomachache. I want connection, with Chamunda, stomach-body. I want my ugly greedy demons that befriended me. I want to stop, I want to read a book. I feel saliva in my mouth. I hear the air conditioning alive in these tall ceilings. I hear the heater ticking. Robin out there looking at the Wetland sign.
A herd of movement in the gray-brown out the window. Deer move carefully in suburbia. I can count four of them, standing in their places, flicking the itches in their ears, shaking their heads, chewing. They look thin, their tails seem shaggy. One has settled down to rest, more relaxed in the wetland preserve than a human or a dog would be. I can see the tips of the other’s ears, flicking, shifting. White tails, brown tails lined with white fur, lined with black. Now two are lying down.
No, not working. The sense of distance, I am not there. I am paddling in the mud, pawing, clawing, mud between my toes. I have itching on my scalp, dry mouth, stomachache. I have to do my taxes. Vague sensation in the nipple of my left breast. Vague irritation in my rectum. Slight sensation of a single hair tickling my right cheek. Maybe there or maybe not. A welling up of anger that none of my co-workers are sitting in a library trying to clear their head with writing on a Saturday. A story. A gurgle in my guts. A restlessness in my legs—why am I sitting still? Sensation in my left buttock/hip, a sensation around the back of my left ear. Mother speaks sharply to her child. Ticking, periodic sound of wind—or is it air conditioning?
Dirty wall in the ladies’ bathroom near the light switch. Childrens’ hands. Wondering if I should call my brother. Wondering too long is never good. Stomachache. The regular diary. The jotting. The tendency. Dependent origination. The chain. The wrangling. The striving and the letting go. The seeking a rhythm. Child’s voice behind me. Heater ticking. Draft consistent. Periodically there is a sound of wind.
Just three pages, all boiled down to just three pages. My granola stomachache, the dryness in my nose and mouth. Heater ticking next to me, cold air drafting from behind my shoulder. Grayness out the window, brownness out the window, sign saying “wetland preserve” names that small anonymous swampy spot. My relationship with suffering is changing, trying to change. Or is this all in my head anyway?
Remembering…
isolated parks where I have retreated to do some writing. Not happening today. Today, no pleasure park, just chaos in the Starbucks. Busy. Holiday buzz. Bland songs, blunt. Cold feet. Fast talkers.
Sometimes here, sometimes not here.
Wool socks don’t help. Cold feet, cold hands, cold pen, cold pages.
When something’s not that easy to continue. When I have left the field and gained the hermitage. When lunch is lost and chores still stare you in the face. It’s 2 o’clock and women wearing scarves.
Soft—softness of her terms. The soundness of her structure. Building system like a structure of spun sugar, stained with drops of food coloring. Where do you want to work? On the page, on the screen? at some point, I let go of all that effort. That did fall away like husks. I envy Mister You, at his desk just prior to dawn, staring out the window at the frozen lawn, no meadow. Cardinals and bluebirds. Resistant to maternal comments, on the —Robins or the —Peepers. Like a metronome each spring drawing your attention. And yet I have to trace my way through boredom, I have to throw my mind a bone to chew on and make Money. It’s awfully hard to retain my concentration on this thin high music as though here I was up in the mountains in my hut.
Tracing. Battles, bombs, blood. And how we carry on.
In the household—there is nothing happening. The garden cleared of sticks and stalks, but not turned over, soft and warm under a thin layer of rotten hay. Earthworms fat, inert with cold. Occasional grub, dug up, in half moon pose, not something I really want to lean in and observe.
Train sounds.
Wind.
Entertaining writing requirements, forcing myself to sit down and put something on paper, I understand that urge to just fling up your hands and refuse to create, refuse to push a small pocket open in the fabric of unknowns. Quicker the better. Numbered paragraphs. Goose honking seems to be upset. And yes, I have a headache. The ache of loneliness and isolation—but is it really desire, the desire for recognition? here we go again. Maybe that goose is honking-honking for her mate.
Sunlight. The train lumbers in the opposite direction. Commuters. My secret commutation.
Eyes leak tiredness. New Canaan women walking, geese strolling cross the road, their bellies dripping lake water.
More reading, more writing. Right now my skin is salty with dried sweat, I’m jittery with coffee. There is no torpor. I am radiant in the fragility of March. The fleeting ice, the flavors in the atmosphere, the thin glittering legs of these lake birds, hunting, hunting. Fish? Wishing for a lot of frogs around the edges of my pond, wishing for a pond. My parents’ relationship with the spring peepers in their backyard swamp. Yes, I have boredom, ill will, yes, and guess what—it is mine. I saw and felt that here just now. How latent it remains, the tendency to blame. Here I am warm and contained, my teeth are singing off the fluid line of ink. The failbetter, the magazine. Lists of objects. A book, over-sized, with heavy plastic pages, inscribed (somehow) with freewrites. I feel breathless.
My bloodroots, buried in a pile of leaves. Something exhausting.
Patchy clouds—I’m still awaiting rain.
It is a thicket. The conifer garden is ultimately soothing. After wandering down into the marshlands, following the rotting boardwalk, achieving the stability of brown and stagnant water, she wanted then to rise. Climbing hills, across the broad lawn, observing the perennial garden now completely dormant. It wasn’t hard for me to find the isolated snowdrop, crocus, just look down. At the gate, sign says No Pets and I feel a true relief at the restriction. No footsteps mark the snowfall on the secluded upper path. Dark conifer presences so silent in their various forms, some curly needles, others quite like fans, or dark green fuzz along the branch. Winding whiteness, the brief sensation of being lost again in that small place I know so well, trickling of liquid drainage through the mushy grasses out the drainpipe.
I am lost.
Lost. Description even becomes too much of a responsibility.
there are crumbs on my page
small blueberry stain on my thumb
my eyes are slightly sore from crying
yoga this morning—touched a fault line, a fault line in the striving earthcrust. I felt it, almost like a pop, like my back or neck went out, but maybe this time it was my will. A trickle of sadness like defeat (Step 1).
Un visible
A standing stone.
Three standing stones, white marble, in the conifer garden (trust the rhythm it will take you where you want to go) the lax
whispers
the coffee
the hand
Starting out—the navigation of impersonal agendas. Happy to be unambitious in the midst of the ambitious. There are tulips in here.
Small boxwood bushes shaking in the wind.
Painful snow. Hard crystals, dirt.
Waking alone waking to the bare bones of a room and the bald pinkness of the light outside.
Waking into a zen of discouragement echoing from past mountainsides.
I am resting. My arm feels like a brittle painful twig twig of pain.
Thoughts—no use thinking thoughts
Listening to the space between the thoughts
times of meditation in the sad café
Uneasy, writing in bed on Tuesday.
First, take some conscious breaths. Expel on the exhalation. Expel the instructions. Intentions.
A monument of agendas inside.
Try to arrive. Get here.
Wanted to write my Godamifesto.
Discovering Anne Waldman, turning pages of her Vow with my long haggy-fingered hands and damaged wrist.
Not much can I do. Limited.
Au revoir.
Everyone in this room is alive. There are no dead in this room. The dead don’t travel among us. The dead don’t have a Rewards Card.